notoriété !!!

un grand merci à Michel Leurette qui a signé une très gentille "news" dans La Vie de la Moto du 23 août.

ça met la pression !! 

so british ; MOTOR ROCK W650 CUSTOM

Casey Stoner to undergo surgery will skip Brno round

with "twowheelsblog"

Casey Stoner was scheduled to be racing this weekend at the Brno GP following his stoic 4th place at Indianapolis, after suffering significant ligament damage and small fractures to his right ankle during a massive highside in qualifying.

After reviewing his MRI scans, his doctors in Australia have advised the reigning World champion that he needs to undergo surgery to repair the injury and will now be forced to skip the Czech Grand Prix.

Stoner is currently 3rd in the championship and stand 39 points behind Jorge Lorenzo in the standings with seven rounds to go and this unexpected set-back will slip him further down in the standings and defending his title could be all but over.

Here’s what Stoner said during today’s pre-event press conference at Brno:

“I’m hugely disappointed for my team and all the guys around me. We’ve been waiting since Indianapolis for my doctor in Australia to receive the discs of the MRI scan and x-rays to fully understand the situation. The doctors in America were fantastic but I needed a specialist to study them and give me his report and explain exactly what’s gone wrong. We were hoping that once they had seen the scans that it wouldn’t be as bad as I first suspected and that we could race here, but in fact it was the opposite and a lot worse than first expected. We only found out at lunchtime today that it was game over but it seems this is our only option at this point. We don’t have a timescale for my return yet - it depends on the surgery and how fast I can recover. We still have a season to complete and this isn’t just me giving up, I want to get back to racing as soon as possible. I have a job to do and a career to see through to the end and for it to finish like this would be a disaster, so I’ll be back as soon as I can to take part in as many races as I can before the end of the season”.

Marco Melandri: 'Rossi's crisis has given me credibility'

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Valentino Rossi’s failure to perform in two seasons with Ducati has left former MotoGP riderMarco Melandri feeling somewhat vindicated because when he failed at Ducati no one gave him a free pass like fans have been doing with Rossi, and many wrongly said that Melandri was burned out and now we know that it wasn’t true.

The Italian was set to ride for Ducati in 2007, but Fausto Gresini decided to use his option on the Italian and wouldn’t release him, so Ducati’s third draft pick Casey Stoner was hired and the rest of the story is now written in motorcycle racing history books.

Melandri finally joined Ducati in 2008 and had a two-year deal to ride what at that time many deemed to be the best and most powerful bike on the grid - while the wildly talented Stoner who took 10 victories and four podiums that season seemed more of an afterthought - but the Italian’s debut season was disastrous that Ducati forced him to go to a sports psychologist because of his lowly position in the championship and they even publically asked Ducati Superbike riders Troy Bayliss and Max Biaggi to test the GP8 (which was a hybrid of the 2007 machine) to show Melandri that his lack of performance was not due to the bike - both riders declined, while Sete Gibernau came out of retirement to do a three-day test on the 2008 and 2009 machines and would later make an aborted attempt to return to action with the very short lived Grupo Francisco Hernando team.

In an interview with the usual Gazzetta dello Sport, Melandri said, “I haven’t enjoyed seeing the difficulties Valentino has had, but they do show that I was right. I knew I was fast and had the right sensations to help in development, but I wasn’t listened to, Valentino’s problems has given me back credibility” but the Italian was quick to point out that he doesn’t “ live on revenge and the past does no longer counts.”

On Andrea Dovizioso going to Borgo Panigale, Melandri doesn’t predict an easy future for his fellow countryman, “For Andrea it was the only choice. I hope that I am wrong, but the premises aren’t rosy. Ducati will not spend the same amount on research and development that they invested on with Rossi.”